International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019 Special Edition: Science, Applied Science, Teaching and Education On the Perception of Prosodic Prominences and Boundaries in Larantuka Malay Variety by Non-Native Speakers Marcelinus Y. F. Akoli English Education Department, FKIP, Universitas Nusa Cendana Email: [email protected] Abstract This paper examines how non-native speakers of Larantuka Malay Variety (henceforth LMV) perceive the prosodic prominences and boundaries of the language, as well as finding out the extent to which the ‘raters’ agree one with another on the values of prosodic prominences and boundaries of LMV. This is descriptive-qualitative research. The data was collected through Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) (Cole & Shattuck-Huffnagel, 2016) by involving 16 non- native speakers of LMV who gave their perceptions on every word inside 9 excerpts by scoring the words from 0.0 to 1.0. The data was firstly calculated to find the mean of each word in the excerpts where they are presented in line charts. Secondly, to assess the extent where the raters agree with one another on the perceptions, this is measured by using Cohen’s Kappa Coefficient in statistics software named ‘IBM SPSS Statistics 20’. The results are then classified based on Agreement Categories (Riesberg, Kalbertodt, Baumann, & Himmelmann, 2018). Result shows there is a high variability of inter-raters’ agreement on the prosodic prominences which also means that there is a very small percentage of agreement among the raters on the prosodic prominences. On the other hand, less variability of the inter-raters’ agreement is obtained when perceiving the prosodic boundaries. This means that there is more agreement on the perception of prosodic boundaries rather than the prosodic prominences. Furthermore, it also means that there is a significantly better performance on the prosodic boundaries rather than the prosodic 548 International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019 Special Edition: Science, Applied Science, Teaching and Education prominences. For a further step, it is interesting to know how native speakers of LMV perceive the prosodic prominences and boundaries of their own language and to compare the results of the native speakers’ perception with that of the non-native speakers. Keywords: perception, prosodic prominences and boundaries, Larantuka Malay Variety Introduction Background Larantuka Malay or sometime called ‘Nagi Malay’ (ISO: 639-3) is a Malay variety spoken in three different places in East Flores regency of East Nusa Tenggara province, that is, Larantuka town, Wure (on Adonara island) and Konga. Da Franca (2000:p.35) explained that the spread of LMV into Wure and Konga were heavily based on the exodus of Portuguese people from Malacca in 1641, that in many cases they brought the language with them. In term of its speaking geography, Larantuka Malay (LMV), in the three speaking places, is surrounded by Lamaholot speaking communities (Fernandez, 2000:p.378). This variety is spoken by around 20,000 speakers (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2019)(Eberhard & Simons G. F., & Fennig, 2019) in which about 90 percent of them are Roman Catholic. Typologically, LMV is an Austronesian language inherited from Proto Malayic Languages which belong to a West-Malayo Polynesian subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian group (Blust, 1997). Prentice (Paauw, 2008, p. 202)(Paauw, 2013) classified Malay languages into three types, i.e, ‘mother-tongue’ Malay, ‘lingua franca’ Malay and ‘official’ Malay. Based on this classification, LMV belongs to ‘lingua franca’ Malay. Later, Adelaar and Prentice (Adelaar, 2005)(Adelaar, 2005) revised Prentice’s classification by producing three new kinds of Malay languages, that is, (1) Literary/Classical Malay, (2) Trade Malay or Pidgin-based Malay and (3) Vernacular Malay. 549 International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019 Special Edition: Science, Applied Science, Teaching and Education According to this division, LMV is therefore grouped into ‘Vernacular Malay’. From a historical viewpoint (Paauw, 2013), Malay languages are divided into ‘national’ language, ‘inherited’ varieties and ‘contact’ varieties. Based on the three varieties, LMV is classified as a variety which was stimulated by contacts in East Indonesia. Historically writing, Spencer and Thomas claimed that LMV was firstly introduced around the Solor archipelago in the 5th century when there was a continuous contact between Malay traders and Larantuka dwellers (Akoli, 2010, p. 15). Since then, it has become a locally- important language for people of Larantuka and surrounding areas in several domains such as religion, education and trade as well as daily events. Beside Malay, its vocabulary is also composed of Lamaholot, Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese and Dutch words (Monteiro,1975). There are several reasons why LMV is considered important to discuss here. Firstly, LMV is the author’s mother-tongue. He was born and grew up in the speaking community although he has migrated from the community since 1994. Secondly, it is currently classified by Ethnologue (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2019)(Eberhard & Simons G. F., & Fennig, 2019) as ‘a threatened language’. In the author’s viewpoint, being under this condition also means that LMV is facing a number of linguistically-threatening issues such as ‘brain-drain’, the increasing uses of Bahasa Indonesia in more domains is probably creating a negative perception, of its speakers, toward LMV. Without considering the history of LMV development, there are certain people and speakers who believe that LMV may be best understood as ‘a broken form of the standard Indonesian’. Existing Research on Prosody of Malay Languages and the Problems The prosody of Malay languages is a topic that has been increasingly investigated. A book edited by van Heuven and van Zanten (2007)(Heuven & Zanten, 2007) discussed the prosodic 550 International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019 Special Edition: Science, Applied Science, Teaching and Education natures of 5 Malay varieties, i.e, the standard Indonesian (Goedemans & van Zanten, 2007, pp. 35-60)(Goedemans & Zanten, 2007) ; Toba Batak and Betawi Malay (Roosman, 2007, pp. 89- 114)(Roosman, 2007) ; Manado Malay (Stoel, 2007, pp. 117 - 149)(Stoel, 2007) and Kutai Malay (Sugiyono, 2007, pp. 151-170). Less than a decade after the appearance of the book, Maskikit- Essed and Gussenhoven (2016, pp. 353-389)(Maskikit-Essed & Gussenhoven, 2016) published their paper on Ambonese Malay prosody. Two years after that, Riesberg et al (2018, pp. 389- 414)(Riesberg, Kalbertodt, Baumann, & Himmelmann, 2018) released their article on prosodic prominences and boundaries of Papuan Malay. The growing studies on prosodic elements of Malay languages look contrast with LMV itself. Up to now, there have been very limited reports on LMV’s phonology. There are a number of papers discussing LMV’s history (Steinhauer, 1991)(Steinhauer, 1991), morpho-syntax and morpho-semantics (Kumanireng, 1982) (Kumanireng, 1993)(Threes Y Kumanireng, 1993; Threes Yosephine Kumanireng, 1981). However, it should be acknowledged that there are almost no previous articles talking about the LMV prosody or phonology. Being aware of the limited number of publications on LMV’s phonology, this writing aims at contributing to the discussion of prosodic elements in particular and LMV’s phonology in general. Therefore, things that would like to be answered in this paper are (1) what are the perceptions of prosodic prominences and boundaries in LMV by the non-native speakers?; (2) to what extent do the raters agree with one another on the LMV’s excerpts that they listen to? Methodology This is a descriptive-qualitative research (Sugiyono, 2008). In order to see the way raters perceive the prosodic prominences and boundaries of LMV, the author followed several research steps as follows. 551 International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 5, Issue 3, 2019 Special Edition: Science, Applied Science, Teaching and Education The sample of LMV’s data was recorded from a 65-year old woman who has never left Larantuka for more than 3 months in her life. Her monologue was recorded by using a Sony IC Recorder ICD-UX200F. The genre of her monologue was a historical recount. She talked about her experience in witnessing a flood that struck Larantuka in 1979. The duration of her speech is 1.5 minutes, which was separated into 9 excerpts. The spoken data was then presented into tables where each word of each excerpt is put inside a row so that the raters are able to insert the scores of both prosodic prominences and boundaries in them. This method is called ‘Rapid Prosody Transcription’ (RPT) that was made popular by Cole and Shattuck-Huffnagel (2016)(Cole & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2016). The benefits of RPT are that (1) it can be performed by any untrained persons in phonetics ; (2) it can also directly and simply be performed during the perceiving process (Riesberg, Kalbertodt, Baumann, & Himmelmann, 2018, p. 393)(Riesberg et al., 2018). Thus, due to the similar situations faced by the author this time, the author considers this method appropriate for assessing the prosodic prominences and boundaries in LMV. The raters or perceivers themselves are 16 non-native speakers of LMV. They are four males and 12 females. The ages of the raters range